


It's A Long Way Down

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 12:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They’re falling,” Claire said, voice slicing the air with its thin knife’s edge, carving the skin from Amelia’s backbone until she knows that Claire will see her small shriveled heart, see where to strike first, where to strike hard, and where a single puff of air, a single word, could dry up what little blood pumped through her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's A Long Way Down

**Author's Note:**

> For Lena on her birthday, who asked for fic about how Lisa and Amelia would react to an angel falling in their backyard and telling Claire that their grace and four heads and wings are all gone. I’m not sure how well I captured what you were looking, but I’m also sorry this is not better — Happy Belated Birthday. <3

They poured their wine like they did every night when they were so thirsty their throats swelled rough and coarse like deserts, or when they needed to fill the empty pit of their stomachs, scooped hollow of heart and soul leaving nothing but the dried up entrails of their ashes still strung together with the straggling knots of limbs and bones, tendons and muscles, and stitched back together again with their fingers and the red kisses of their mouths.

And it was on such a night like this, when their dishes piled up with crusted on mac n cheese from the box, made with soy milk because it lasted longer, when they filled their juice glasses with sweet yellow wine, narrow neck toasting their glass lips smudged with cherry chapstick, that the stars began to fall.

They scraped their chairs back, made their way to the window, spotted with dried up rain and sprayed with dust from the road and the hills and the stale breath of god.

If they made wishes, they did not speak them, merely washed them down with their cold wine sweating their slick palms.

“I don’t think those are stars,” Lisa said finally.

Amelia shook her head, arms folded close around her abdomen, like she could protect whatever was left inside, those scraps of feelings that still felt like Amelia Novak, not the pillar of smoke that had burned her.

“They’re angels.”

They hadn’t even hear Claire come in, on her feet soft as a deer’s, even though she prowled in the shadows and the sun, seeking for the face of her father in the space between the atoms that spun her body from stardust, in the universe between the cages of her ribs gravitating around the sun of her soul.

“They’re falling,” Claire said, voice slicing the air with its thin knife’s edge, carving the skin from Amelia’s backbone until she knows that Claire will see her small shriveled heart, see where to strike first, where to strike hard, and where a single puff of air, a single word, could dry up what little blood pumped through her.

“I bet they’re mortal now,” Claire said.  She had her bat in hand, fingers flexing around the duct tape on the handle, passing it from hand to hand like she used to do her knives before Amelia had forbid them. Amelia closed her eyes, returned her gaze to the window.

Lisa took Amelia’s hand, brushed the bottom of her chin with her other fingertips, traced the salt tracks on her cheeks . “Maybe just their vessels are mortal,” Lisa said.

Clair’s smile glittered in the dark, all big cat. “Maybe they shouldn’t have said yes.”

“Maybe they didn’t have a choice,” Amelia said, surprised she was able to find the thin shreds of her voice from where it had gone to hide.

Fire flared the window, scorching a silhouette of flared wings, six of them stretching out for the sky and for heaven, burned into glass and wood.

Claire’s eyes never closed as the angel burned, and the fire lit the shallow hollows of her face, lifting her skull from the smooth cup of its skin, and Amelia wondered if she was supposed to fear her daughter, but how could she bring her into her arms when Claire still shied away, and how could she even trust the muscles in her own limb again?

But then Claire turned, quick and sure like a ram, head bowed and lowered, knees bent as she ran out the front door, and Amelia couldn’t even hear her flitting step on the rickety wooden porch before she scrabbled for purchase in their thin carpet, kicking Lisa feebly away, as she tried to follow Claire before she too walked out that door and stepped onto that porch to never come home again.

Claire already stood on the brink of the crater, the dried up grass still smoking from the deep impact, her feet kicking the rocks and hard clumps of dirt away. Her muscles flexed as she raised her bat into the air, poised to strike over her shoulder.

“Claire,” she whispered, trying to shout, but there wasn’t enough air to force it even louder, a sad, limp balloon of dry, hot air. “Claire!”

A hand reached from the hole, shaking and trembling as it tried to find a grip.

  
Claire’s feet danced at the crumbling edge, near the clutching fingers of the angel.

And then Lisa was there, had followed her, had seen the stretch of her hand and had gone to the crater, pushing Claire out of the way as she reached out to drag the angel from the ground.

Their vest was slashed and torn, their collar charred. They fought against Lisa, but perhaps the fall made them weak or maybe Lisa was just stronger than them as they struggled up out of the pit, their legs kicking, their mouth barred and snarling, teeth snapping until Lisa let the angel go, standing between them and Claire, watching eager and hungry, as they staggered on two legs, bent crooked and awkward at the knee, a great cry ripping from their throat, hands flexed into fists that went wide, aimed towards no one, until they fell to their knees, hands beating the ground in time with their panting breaths, until they were finally still for a moment.

Amelia should have kept a closer eye on Claire, should have warned Lisa, but she took them both by surprise, pushing Lisa hard to the ground, breath stunned out of her as she grunted and gasped, and Claire loomed over the angel, bat heavy on her shoulder as she stepped over their ankles and paced around the angel’s prone form, their shadows bleeding together as she said, “Where’s the rest of you, huh?”

She squatted beside the angel, bent her head so that she could find the angel’s eyes. “I only ever saw Castiel’s faces once before he covered my eyes with his wings and they burned and they burned and tried to sear the memory away—but I held on. And I’ve been waiting because I need to see them again.”

The angel lifted their head, their hands clutched tight against their abdomen like they needed to keep something from spilling out. 

“Are you going to ask for a new vessel? This one looks all beat up.” Claire dropped lower to the ground, till she kneeled before the angel, bat dragging forgotten at her heels.

The angel’s hand lashed out, fingers bent cruelly into a weak resemblance of claws, seeking for the soft hollow of Claire’s throat.

She dodged the blow easily enough, laughter falling from her teeth like hard pebbles. “You’ve got nothing.” Then her face fell. “This isn’t going to be worth it, is it?” Her face twisted. “You’re not even an angel anymore. You fell!” she shouted.

She rushed to her feet, rage overflowing like a volcano, her fists in her hair, screaming. She flung her body around, her fingers finding the collar of the angel’s blouse. “Where is he? Where is Castiel? Can you at least tell me that?”

Amelia knew she should move, that she needed to calm her kid down right now (but how), but she couldn’t. Cement filled her bones instead of marrow and if she moved she would crack and split along her ribs.

But Lisa had already pried herself from the ground, fist pumping at her chest, smacking the air back into it. “Claire,” Lisa said, coughing. “Take a time out.”

“What am I, six?”   

“You might as well be,” the angel said. They had swayed to their feet, their knees rubbing against each other as they struggled for balance.  Their hands gripped Claire’s wrists, bent them backwards until their fingers released the bat and the pressure bowed Claire to her knees. Lisa ran forward, but both Claire and the angel held out their hands, and she skidded to a stop in the earth, and swerved instead to help Amelia to her feet.

The angel smelled Claire deep, eyes closed. “You’re not him. You’re no angel, either. Not anymore.”

Water streamed from the angel’s eyes, and they rubbed their palm against the flow, and just brought it away wet and muddy.  

“Shut up,” Claire said as the angel let her go.

The angel stumbled away, right into Amelia and Lisa, and they both grabbed them by their shoulders.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Lisa said.

“Get away!”

“You think you’re going to get far on your damn crusade like that? You’re not even healing. You’ve got no grace. You’re human now.”

“I am not! How dare you—” They coughed a wracking hollow sound from their lungs, and their palm came away bloody.

“Why don’t you take a minute to rest?” Lisa said. “Are you thirsty? We have water and tea—“

Amelia pushed Lisa way from the angel, and they staggered together. “What? Why are you inviting them here? They take people, they took my husband, they—“

“What? It’s not like I offered them the wine,” Lisa said.

“I refuse and decline,” the angel said. “You have nothing that I need here. Nothing that I want.”  

Claire ran after the angel, bounding till she was in front, walking backwards to keep her eyes on them. “You’re after him, aren’t you, you’re after Castiel and I know you’re missing your grace and I know you’ve only got your human face, but we’re two heads together, and we’ve got teeth and we’ve got fists and you’ve got your sword and I’ve got my bat—come on, just say yes.”

The angel pushed Claire hard to the ground, so hard the wind was smacked out of her. “Get out of my way, human filth!”

Amelia reached out her hand to help Claire up, but she flinched away and scrambled up herself. “Leave me alone!”

She watched the angel disappear down the sidewalk, then her daughter slamming her way back into the house.

“Everything’s changing,” Lisa said, coming to stand beside her, folding her hand into Amelia’s.

Amelia wished Lisa was right. “Nothing’s changed. It’s just harder to hide now.”

It took a long time for them to come back to the house, all the while as angels streaked across the sky, and fell.

 For Lena, who asked for: “lisa and amelia [reacting] to an angel falling in their backyard and telling claire that their grace and four heads and wings are all gone”


End file.
